A TRILOGY ON
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Book One
PREPARING FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
DR. EDUARDO A. MORATÓ, JR.
Copyright 2012 EDUARDO A. MORATÓ, JR
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0956-6
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INTRODUCTION
A Trilogy on Entrepreneurship caps three decades of entrepreneurial, research, teaching and mentoring work by the author on the development of enterprises and the evolution of entrepreneurs. In 1986, after seven years of establishing business and social enterprises under the auspices of the Philippine government, the author transformed his learnings and experiences into sixty new case studies and two books. The first was A Manual on Basic Accounting and Finance and the second was the Development of Enterprise in the Furniture Industry: Text and Cases. The materials were meant to totally revise and invigorate the core MBA course on the Development of Enterprises at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). At that time the course was mainly using feasibility studies extracted from the theses of MBA graduates as case materials. The sixty case studies were also used to augment the Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development course of the newly-launched Master in Development (MDM) program, designed and developed by the author in 1989. Since the case studies carried both business and social development themes, they were flexible enough for use by both the MBA and MDM programs.
The novelty of teaching business approaches to government, non-government and various development students taking the MDM program propelled the author to embark on writing development-oriented books. Two volumes were published on Strategic Interventions for Development Managers. A Handbook for Governors and A Handbook for Mayors were written under the auspices of Development Partners Inc. and the USAID. In 1994, the first book ever published on Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development was written by the author under the sponsorship of AIM and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
In 1995, the author received approval from the faculty of AIM to organize the Asian Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE). The objectives of ACE were to research on entrepreneurs running small to medium scale enterprises all over Asia and to design and develop certificate and degree courses on entrepreneurship. Two hundred case studies, readings and research papers later, the Master in Entrepreneurship (ME) program was launched at AIM in July, 1999. The program proved to be an immediate success with close to 100 entrepreneurs enrolling for the first offering.
The ME program was tailor-fit to the needs of entrepreneurs. They attended classes for only 90 full class days over 18 months. After learning their lessons in class, the entrepreneurs applied their learnings on their actual businesses, which served as their live laboratories. The entrepreneurs were mentored by “gurus” who provided advice and used the Socratic method to elicit critical and creative thinking from the entrepreneurs. The gurus were aided by “drillmasters” who accompanied the entrepreneurs in tackling the technical aspects of their management subjects and enterprise development modules. The entrepreneurs submitted their research findings and business applications to the gurus and drillmasters all throughout the 18 months. At the end of the 18 months, the entrepreneurs prepared and defended their five-year business plans. The entrepreneurs received their ME diplomas but not on the usual basis of exams and quizzes nor on their eloquence in class recitations. Rather, they passed or failed depending on the actual performance of their businesses. The five P’s of Profitability, Productivity, Professionalism, Paradigm Change and People Upliftment were the criteria used by the gurus.
To help the entrepreneurs cope with the left and right brain demands of the ME, the author published three additional books in 2000. The left brain book was a basic handbook on finance for entrepreneurs, titled Enterprise Creation and Procreation. The right brain books were on Creativity and Intuition in Managements and on the Ten Universal Principles of Great Art and their Applications to Leadership and Management.
During the course of the ME, the author realized that the academic backbone of the entire program focused on three masteries: Self Mastery, Situation Mastery and Enterprise Mastery. He decided to tackle the last two masteries first by writing the book on Strategic Planning and Management, published by Prentice Hall in 2006. The book provided the “how to’s” of analyzing the external and internal environments of the enterprise, the framework used for Situation Mastery. The book covered both the management functions (marketing, operations, finance and organization) and the management processes (planning, evaluating, coordinating, controlling, staffing, and directing), as well as enterprise planning and programming, all of which laid the foundations for Enterprise Mastery.
It was not until a year later, in 2007, that the author compiled all of his musings and writings into a book on the seven Self Mastery skills of Learning to Think, Learning to Intuit, Learning to Feel, Learning to Do, Learning to Communicate, Learning to Lead and Learning to Be. The year 2007 was significant to the author. AIM decided to spin off ACE and entrust it to the five gurus running the program. The ME, under the wings of AIM, would end with the fourteenth and fifteenth runs of the program. In just eight years, the ME program had 15 offerings, accepting over 600 entrepreneurs and graduating about 400.
ACE is planning to relaunch the ME program in partnership with another prestigious academic institution in 2009. Meanwhile, the author and his partners at ACE have decided to spread the good news on entrepreneurship to the rest of the country and to the world. The author took on the presidency of the ABS-CBN Bayan Foundation, an organization committed to social and enterprise development through microfinancing, grassroots entrepreneurship, technical skilling and job generation, and the propagation of entrepreneurship education at the high school, college, masters and, soon, doctorate levels. It was in this context that the author decided to write A Trilogy on Entrepreneurship.
A Trilogy on Entrepreneurship is intended for schools offering degree courses on entrepreneurship as well as for entrepreneurs who want to be guided in their adventurous undertakings. The author’s 30 years of experience in establishing enterprises, teaching students, counseling entrepreneurs, consulting for executives, and researching on various topics related to entrepreneurship constitute the academic and practitioner foundations for this three-volume opus.
A Trilogy on Entrepreneurship is divided into three books with the sub-titles of Preparing for Entrepreneurship, Creating the Enterprise, and Growing the Enterprise. As the sub-titles suggest, the Trilogy follows the life cycle of entrepreneurs as they scout around for opportunities, evaluate the many possible opportunities, focus on the most promising ones, establish enterprises to actualize the opportunities, invite investors and financiers to participate, and, finally, launch and grow their enterprises.
FOREWORD
Book One, Preparing for Entrepreneurship, opens the curtains on A Trilogy on Entrepreneurship. As the title proclaims, Book One endeavors to take the entrepreneur through the step-by-step process of Opportunity Seeking, Opportunity Screening and Opportunity Seizing. The first step allows the entrepreneur to unravel the myriad possibilities in finding a good business venture by following any one of several proven methodologies. This is a creative and divergent thinking process. The second step evaluates the possibilities using